


hurt like you've never been loved

by orphan_account



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games), Batman: Arkham - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Public Blow Jobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 01:37:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15450501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The Arkham Knight is a broken shell of a man. Dick decides to try convincing him otherwise.





	hurt like you've never been loved

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArkhamJay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArkhamJay/gifts).



Jason was going to be handsome before the Joker took him. He was a hardened fighter, but he wasn't actually as old as he thought he was. He was still small and awkward, couldn't get used to how quickly his body was growing. He'd only just begun to lose the baby fat. Dick had not been, regretfully, the most attentive surrogate brother, and he hadn't known Jason, not really — or at least, he hadn't known him well enough to really understand what had been going on with him — but he'd known the basics: that Jason was trouble in a good way, that he always started out with good intentions even if he struggled with the follow-through. And Dick had definitely known that Jason was going to be a looker. He was going to break hearts. 

Jason is more beautiful now, Dick realizes, with his face marred, his body disfigured, his entire being thrumming with intense, undeniable life.

*

Nightwing has been spotted in Gotham, and some part of Jason knows it's only a matter of time before perky, perfect Dick Grayson comes bursting into his base of operations, armed with all sorts of thoughts and feelings and emotions that Jason would really rather not deal with right now. He has a militia to lead, after all. 

But it's going to happen sooner than later. It shouldn't be difficult to figure out the identity of the Arkham Knight, even if it's taking Bruce a bit longer than Jason had expected from the world's greatest detective. Then again, Jason has become fairly accustomed to being disappointed by Bruce.

At any rate, Dick is going to find him, and find out who he is, and then they're probably going to have to have a fucking dialectic about all the shit the Joker did to him and why his face looks like this and whether there's anything good left in him. Jason wonders how Dick will react when he's finally killed Bruce, when he's finally removed that blight from the earth — and how deliciously angry and devastated Dickie'll be when the old man is dead. Dick might actually then wash his hands of his misbehaving young successor, once and for all, and Jason will be free.

But if Jason is honest with himself, Dick is a beautiful creature of infinite hope and forgiveness. Sometimes Jason wants to throttle him.

The surveillance tape had been generously provided by one of Harvey Dent's business associates after Slade had gently dangled him out of a helicopter for a bit. There isn't much to see, just the grainy image of Nightwing grappling past Second National Bank. It's a shame his face can't be made out; Jason wants to see his face. Just — just to verify his identity. The bright stripes on his shoulders, the grace with which he swings — unmistakeable. Jason's watched it upwards of twenty times.

Slade raises an eyebrow at him. "Any new information?" he asks, tone skeptical.

"I think I'm taller than him now," says Jason.

Slade gives him what he imagines is a very pointed look. Jason ignores it in favor of staring at the video again.

"Do what you need to do," Slade says with a grunt. "Just don't let it interfere with our plans."

Jason grimaces; there's nothing he _needs_ to do, and at any rate, he's not taking orders from anybody. He's open to taking advice, though, which is how he decides to interpret that last remark. See, he's getting very good at this "playing well with others" thing. 

He doesn't want to wait for Nightwing to find him. The latest intel says the man's still in Gotham, probably doing somersaults off construction sites and trying to convince himself he's not still under Batman's thumb. 

Dick's preferred route of patrol always starts out around Park Row, winds a circuitous path around the narrow alleyways of Chinatown, and then, somewhere after he does a sweep of the Bowery, but before he heads towards the neighborhood surrounding Gotham University, he'll pass by the cathedral. 

There's a bell tower there that Jason likes. It had always been a good place to hide, back when he was Robin — he could sneak a cigarette or two and find some peace away from the world. 

He isn't looking for peace tonight. He rings the bell. 

The sound echoes across the evacuated city, fullsome and menacing. Pleased with himself, Jason leans against his favorite gargoyle and imagines how ominous he must look, silhouetted against the night sky. He always did have a weakness for the dramatic. 

A few minutes, then the sound of a grappling hook fired, and then Nightwing is swinging towards him. He's shouting. Jason can't make the words out through the rush of blood in his ears, but it doesn't matter, the feeling of adrenaline lifting him up and into a combat stance. He fires over Dick's head. He's been waiting for a good fight.

Jason knows how to play this game. The tabloids can spout their regular breathless bullshit about how Nightwing's such an elegant fighter, how he blends aikido and Krav Maga and twelve other martial arts into some kind of acrobatic dance-combat, but Jason knows it's nonsense. Dick might be using Wing Chun techniques or whatever when he spars with that replacement guy from time to time, but when Dick's in the field, fighting against a real enemy, it's really just a little bit of escrima and a whole lot of doing backflips for no discernible reason. 

He shouldn't be good enough to hold his own in single combat against Jason. Not with his idiotic hit-them-with-a-stick technique, not when Jason has spent so much of his adolescence trying to be a better Dick Grayson — better in every way, quicker and stronger and cleverer, and maybe then he'd be just as deserving of love. Jason pushes the thought from his mind, just as Nightwing hits him with a throat strike, right where his armor is weak. 

Somehow he's wound up back against a wall, trachea pinned underneath Dick's right ulna. He's about to lose, Jason realizes, and then he remembers what he came here for. Fighting over, time for talking.

"Looks like you've caught me, Dickiebird," he says, voice modulated through his helmet. A thrill runs through him when he sees the way Dick reacts to his nickname, tensing immediately, eyes narrowing behind his mask. Oh, this will be good.

" _Jason_ ," says Dick, sounding like he's got the wind punched out of him. "Jason, is that you?"

It's been a long time since anyone's called him by that name. It catches him off guard. The pressure on his throat eases; Jason should take the opportunity to shift his weight, grab Dick's arm and immobilize him with a wrist-lock. But he wants to hurt Dick, hurt him badly; he wants to twist a knife somewhere it'll really be felt.

"You're — you're alive," Dick whispers, as though he's struggling to wrap his mind around it. 

"No thanks to you or the Big Bat," says Jason, with as much venom as he can muster. He doesn't come off sounding especially menacing, though, when he actually gets the words out. He thinks he sounds like the child he used to be.

Dick is transfixed. He doesn't move. He's still got Jason pinned. 

"Jay — _Jason_ ," says Dick. "What happened to you?"

At that moment, Jason decides the best way to torment Dick Grayson is to show him the truth.

*

Bruce had not wanted Dick to watch the video, the one of Jason being shot, a full year after he'd gone missing. It wasn't something he needed to do, Bruce had said, though his voice had been hollow, as though he'd still been trying to process what he'd seen. You don't need to see this, he'd said. You shouldn't.

Dick watched it, of course. He'd seen Jason slumped and bound, covered in a year's accumulated blood and grime. How his body had only given a weak twitch when he was shot, like he'd been edging towards death for a long time.

They had already held a funeral, which Dick had not attended. While they had mourned in a private ceremony in the back garden of Wayne Manor, Jason had still been alive, in Arkham's basement, tied to a chair with a length of wire, tortured by a madman. 

*

There's a pneumatic hiss as Jason's helmet begins to release itself from his armor. 

This was a bad idea, Jason realizes now. Dick makes him feel young again in a terrible way, an unloveable and unwanted boy next to his handsome predecessor. Somehow now, he's finally got Dick's attention, but he feels exposed, vulnerable, as though the Joker's hand had cut away all the artifice and molded him into a shape more authentic to himself. 

Dick releases him from his hold, takes a moment and takes his own mask off so they can meet eye-to-eye. His gaze travels slowly over Jason's face, studying his features. Maybe he notices how much Jason's grown since the Joker took him. How broad his shoulders have become, how his jawline has developed into a shape loosely resembling that of an adult man. How scars cross his face and how the flesh beneath his left eye bears the mottled shape of a brand.

"Does Bruce know?" Dick asks, after a pause. "That you're alive, I mean?"

"I don't give a shit," Jason says, suddenly thinking of Bruce again and then the bright feeling of anger that'd fueled him before is back. Good. "You can go tell him. Tell him I'm alive, and I know all about how he — how he left me to fucking die, okay?"

Jason also wants Bruce to know he's going to be the one to end his sorry life, wants Bruce to be able to feel a modicum of how he felt for twelve months. How killing him would be an act of charity, as death is a release Jason himself has not yet been able to experience. Dick doesn't need to know this, not yet.

"He didn't leave you," Dick says quietly. "He looked for you, he —"

Jason doesn't want to hear it, so he punches him in the jaw. It's not a good punch, no real weight to it. Dick lets it glance against his face, doesn't try to block it or pull away, like he knows he might deserve it a little. It's a child's punch. Jason is a child, and he talks with fists.

He bends to pick up his helmet from where it lies discarded by his feet. This was a bad idea, but the overarching mission is not compromised. He can salvage this. He just has to end the confrontation now.

Then there are strong arms tight around his shoulders. He can't feel the warmth of Dick's body against his, shouldn't be able to through his armor, but he _feels_ that he feels it, somehow.

"I'm sorry," says Dick, though Jason can't tell what exactly he's sorry _for_. "I'm just happy you're alive."

Jason squirms and shoves him off. "That makes one of us," he mutters.

" _Jason_ ," Dick begins, and there's a stern edge to his voice. "Don't talk like that."

"You don't get to tell me how to talk, Dickie," says Jason. "I'm not a little Bat you can order around."

"You can come back with me tonight," says Dick, quietly. "You can come back with me, and I won't make you talk to Bruce. We don't have to go to the Manor, I've got an apartment on the other side of the river. And we can just talk. You can talk to me about it, you know. You can talk to me about what happened."

Jason glares harder. "You want me to come with you so we can have a heart-to-heart in your bachelor pad in _Hoboken_?"

"I just want to understand —"

"You wanna understand something? You wanna see some shit? Here, I'll show you," says Jason, stepping back and tugging at his armor, loosening the catches and disabling the weaponised panels. "I'll show you some shit. I'll show you what was — what was going on while you were doing whatever the hell you were doing instead of _looking for me_."

His hands are unsteady, but he manages to disengage his chest plate, zip open the suit underneath and wriggle out. The night air is cold but his blood is pumping fast enough now that his skin feels hot. His torso is well-traversed by scars, from his crimefighting days as well as his time with the Joker, but there's a particularly nasty one that starts right over his heart and crosses around up over his neck and leads jaggedly down his back. 

Barbed wire and a blowtorch, Jason remembers. 

He describes what happened, spares no detail. Dick's face is impassive.

"Every day," says Jason, voice rising, "every fuckin' day I get to look at my ugly mug in the mirror and think about all the — all the shit that happened, and I —"

Dick steps in and touches his chest, and there's electric heat on his body, radiating against Jason's skin through the fabric of Dick's gloves, and his face is so close to his, and Jason doesn't know what else to say. He wishes he'd had something prepared. He wishes he could be eloquent, like a proper villain, spouting off a poetic diatribe against whatever feelgood shit Dickiebird's going to try to sell him. He'll probably make an attempt at some inspirational big-brother-voice lecture about how he's suffered but he can still recover, how life is worth living. 

Instead, Dick traces a gentle finger along the divot in the scar tissue over Jason's heart. 

"You're beautiful, Jay," he says quietly.

Jason can't handle it anymore. He grabs Dick by the collar of his suit and pulls him up and kisses him roughly, a collision of teeth and tongue, and then the soft inside of Dick's lower lip is against the bottom of his. Dick reaches up to grab Jason's hair and oh god, oh god, he's kissing him in return, Dick Grayson is kissing him and every adolescent wet dream he'd ever had is flashing before his eyes. 

Jason has never been more aware of the disgust he has for his body and the evidence it bears of its past.

"Fuck," he breathes, pulling away, "you don't, I'm — why would —"

"You got so tall," says Dick, and the thoughts in Jason's head fall quiet. "I never thought you'd get taller than me." There's a laugh in his voice. "You're all big, and you're so — how'd you get so pretty, Jay?"

"Don't be an asshole," says Jason quietly. "I look like I got put through a meat grinder and hung out to dry."

Dick gazes down again at the map of scars covering Jason's chest. "I think it looks cool," he says, laughing gently, "It suits you."

"Stop that."

"Stop what?"

"Trying to make me feel better by pretending to wanna fuck me," says Jason, but there's no heat to it. Dick presses a kiss against his jawline.

"Not pretending," says Dick. "You're so beautiful, you could ruin my life. You want me to prove it?"

One hand is still in Jason's hair, and Jason hadn't realized how quickly he'd gotten hard at the sound of Dick's praise. Dick's other hand now is roaming past his navel and down towards his crotch. Jason has completely stopped thinking. 

"Okay," says Dick, breathing roughly, "let me show you something." 

He fumbles with both hands a bit, undoes the catch of the next segment Jason's armor, just as it was beginning to feel uncomfortably restrictive. Jason takes a sharp inhale as the panel comes loose.

"So, _so_ beautiful," Dick says again, stripping off his gloves and shoving down Jason's jockstrap.

And then he's sinking down to his knees, fucking _Nightwing_ is on his knees in front of Jason, eyes bright with lust, one hand reaching down to trace teasingly around his balls, then curling around the base of his erection. Dick looks up at Jason and straight into him.

Jason must look like the stunned goddamn idiot he is, because Dick smiles widely, leans in, eyes still locked with Jason's. He draws his tongue in one long swipe up the length of Jason's erection. 

The noise that escapes his throat is fucking embarrassing. 

Jason reaches down, threads his hand through Dick's hair, brushes it back away from his face and tightens his fingers around the strands. Dick lets out a sigh, and then lips close around the head of Jason's cock. He groans.

"Fuck," he says, "Dickie. Dick, you —"

He feels himself sink deeper into the wet heat of Dick's mouth, feels the hot slide of his tongue. Dick bobs his head once, twice, jaw slack. Jason feels himself throb as Dick pulls back up and drags his tongue in a lazy swirl until a bead of saliva begins to drip down his chin. Jason closes his eyes, it's too much, and Dick closes one firm hand around the base of his cock and bobs again. 

He'd had this fantasy before, of course. When he was younger and relatively naïve and still in Robin colors. He hadn't dreamed it would have been here, in a secluded alcove on the roof of Gotham Cathedral — his adolescent imagination had been theatrical, but not _that_ theatrical — but it would've been Dick, always Dick, with his easy smile and melodious voice, and really, teenage Jason Todd had been absolutely hopeless. 

A rhythm sets in as Dick moves up and down, a little quicker now. Jason opens his eyes, looks down and notices Dick's gaze has softened focus to the middle distance, like his eyes have gone hazy with pleasure. Like he enjoys this. He's pressed a hand down the front of his own suit, and oh god, he's touching himself, grinding into his own hand, getting off on this. Getting off on Jason fucking into his throat.

It's been too long, he can't even remember how long it's been. And it's never been like this, never been with someone he still thought of the way he thought of Dick Grayson. He feels disgusting — he feels wanted, _loved_. He won't last like this. Jason feels like all the blood is drained away from his head and straight down to his groin, feels himself throb again, pressure building.

"Dick," he says, voice coming out breathy, "I'm close." 

Dick just tightens his grip and sinks down and starts to pump Jason in earnest, and then he's coming hard, seeing stars, world falling away beneath his feet. He feels Dick swallowing around him. His legs want to buckle. 

Dick doesn't stop until the last shudders have passed through his body, and then he pulls off with a wet sound, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He's still hard, though, so Jason moves down, mind working on autopilot, batting away Dick's hand and closing his own onto Dick and beginning to move. He angles towards Dick's face and kisses him lazily, dipping a tongue slowly into his mouth and finding the bitter taste of himself. 

"You fucking asshole," Jason whispers, but it comes out sounding almost affectionate.

He gives him a few more tugs and then Dick is gone, eyes falling closed and hips quivering, semen dripping against the fabric of the Nightwing suit. That particular detail had been in Jason's fantasies for some time. 

And then it's quiet. For the first time in a long time, it's quiet.

"Hey. _Hey_. Jason," comes Dick's voice, back and unsteady against his side. "I just need to say this. I'm sorry. I should've — I should've been there for you, I should've looked harder for you. I'm sorry."

The sweet feeling of post-orgasmic calm begins to drain away now. The voice in the back of Jason's mind, the one that calls Jason nothing but trouble, is starting to tug at his consciousness again. He's always got to go and ruin everything. It's his destiny. Time to say the wrong thing.

"I'm so sorry, I just —"

"Thanks for the pity fellatio," says Jason, standing up, straightening his limbs, picking his helmet back up. He moves quickly this time, re-engaging his armor with practiced military efficiency.

"Jason, do _not_ do this," says Dick. It's not a command — Dickie's got a special, extra-annoying voice for when he gives out commands — it's just a request. It sounds desperate, and Jason relishes it. "You don't have to do this, Jason. Please."

"It's been fun," continues Jason, "you know, a nice brotherly bonding experience. Thanks for telling me I'm still pretty, I appreciate it. I'm a busy guy, though, and I got a policy of not wasting my time listening to apologies for — for any slights I've got no intention to forgive."

Jason slams his helmet back on, readies his grapple. "Good luck with what's-his-name, don't tell Brucie I said hello." He fires. Doesn't look back, doesn't want to see the look on Dick Grayson's face. Then he's gone.

*

A few days after the very public death of Bruce Wayne, Dick finally manages to ferret out the number to one of Jason's active burner cells. He picks up on the first ring.

"Jason," he says, "it's me, it's Dick, we need to talk." He expects there's a significant chance Jason will hang up. 

"Hey," comes Jason's voice, but he sounds tense. "I'm — I, uh — so, did Bruce fake his own fuckin' death?"

Dick smiles. "Sounds like you care about the old man, after all."

"You — _fuck_ ," Jason sighs angrily, but Dick suspects there's a little bit of relief to it as well. "I fuckin' knew it."

Jason hangs up without saying goodbye. Dick could dial again, but he doesn't want to push it. He thinks he might have made a little progress.


End file.
